Party animals strip girl, molest her in public view

Mumbai: A New Year event at Mumbai's most famous landmark, the Gateway of India, is making news after it went horribly sour. Drunk revellers stripped and molested a woman in public view, as her friend watched helplessly.
On New Year's eve, almost 1,500 men, many of them boisterous, had gathered at the Gateway of India to watch the fireworks. Also present there was one young woman with a male friend.

Just a few minutes before midnight struck on December 31, the crowd worked itself up into a frenzy.

Shadab Khan, a photographer with a local Mumbai daily, Mid-Day, was covering the event from a temporary police watchtower.

The photographs he took, he says, have shaken his faith in the city he has lived in all his life.
"They were a couple and people were trying to misbehave with them. I shot that picture," says he.

Khan recalls from memory that the couple was surrounded by around 70 men, who tore apart the woman's clothes, while her friend tried to protect her - in vain.

The horror continued for almost 10 minutes. The woman - still unidentified - was screaming the whole time.

"The woman was yelling but at that time, the rest of the people were also screaming because the New Year was just a few minutes away so her voice got drowned in the crowd," says Shadab Khan.

After Mid-Day published the photographs, police say they're taking action, but the couple can't be traced; they fled the scene soon after, and have not lodged a police complaint.
Says DCP, Zone I, Brijesh, "We request the victims to come to the police and lodge a complaint. We are going to take very strict steps regarding this and we are trying to identify all the people in the photo."

This latest incident poses new questions on the safety of women in Mumbai city and even though proof of the incident is plain and available to them, the police say that lack of information is their biggest challenge in making any arrest.

VIDEO:

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Courtesy: Mid-day, IBN-CNN